Judge gags all involved in Day murder case

Seth Rosenfeld, OF THE EXAMINER STAFF

Published 4:00 am, Saturday, June 5, 1999

1999-06-05 04:00:00 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- Citing an extraordinary amount of pretrial publicity, lawyers defending the San Francisco cabbie accused of raping, robbing and murdering a female passenger have obtained a temporary court order gagging official comment on the case.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Kevin Ryan on Friday temporarily barred all legal officials involved in the case - such as police, prosecutors, defense lawyers and the county coroner - from revealing or commenting on information about the case, in which cab driver Jehad Baqleh is accused of killing Julie Christine Day.

The temporary order came one day after The Examiner and other news outlets published stories, based on unnamed sources, reporting that Baqleh had told San Francisco police that he believed Day was a devil and exerted supernatural powers on him.

While Ryan's order does not directly cover members of the media or the public, it could hinder journalists' ability to gather and report information about the case.

Such gag orders, which observers say are increasingly common in California, pose a constitutional conflict: They pit the defendants' Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial against the public's First Amendment right to free speech.

Baqleh, 31, of Hayward, has pleaded not guilty and is being held without bail at San Francisco County Jail. He is charged with murdering Day, a 24-year-old administrative assistant from Walnut Creek, after picking her up as a fare in his cab May 14 outside the Bubble Lounge in the Financial District. Her body was found six days later partly buried near China basin.

If convicted, Baqleh faces a possible death sentence.

Ryan issued the order verbally in his courtroom at the Hall of Justice at the request of Public Defender Jeff Brown, who is defending Baqleh. Brown was present along with prosecutor Murlene Randle, head of the homicide section of District Attorney Terence Hallinan's office, who concurred with the request.

"There is a gag order, and it's premised on the extraordinary amount of publicity," Brown said Friday after the hearing. Clarence Johnson, a spokesman for Hallinan, confirmed the order.

Both sides declined to discuss it further, but legal experts said requests for such gag orders typically were based on claims that intense publicity about the case might bias prospective jurors against the defendant before the case was tried.

Ryan set June 11 for a hearing at which the media may oppose extending the order.

Phil Bronstein, The Examiner's executive editor, said gag orders were "not conducive to a free flow of information" and that the paper would consider challenging the order.

Jim Ewert, an attorney for the California Newspaper Publishers Association, which represents more than 500 daily and weekly papers, said the state had had a rising number of orders barring officials from commenting on court cases.&lt;